A bid to shrink the ranks of transfer students to the University of Minnesota has opened a rift among the state’s public higher-education institutions.

The Minnesota State Colleges and Universities System has sounded alarms over the U’s plan to trim transfer student enrollment roughly 8 percent over the next couple of years. MnSCU supplies 45 percent of U transfers.

The U’s plan is “troubling and disappointing,” said Larry Litecky, interim vice chancellor for academic and student affairs at MnSCU. It goes against the state’s commitment to improve access to four-year degrees for all residents, added Litecky, who noted that amid talk of closer cooperation between the U and MnSCU, he heard of the plan through the media.

But U officials say the flak is unfair. The decrease will be small, particularly for a university that enrolls transfer students at much higher rates than most of its peers, they argue. And stabilizing the number of transfers will help the U ease those newcomers into campus life.

“There’s this perception we’re talking about obliterating transfer students,” said Bob McMaster, vice provost and dean of undergraduate education. “The decrease we’re looking at is really a drop in the bucket.”

Universities across the U.S. are revisiting their transfer philosophies, experts say. They are reacting to rapidly growing community college enrollment, fueled in part by cash-strapped students who look to make headway toward a four-year degree for less money before transferring in.

The U welcome mat has long been out for transfer students. The 3,260 transfers in 2009 represented more than 40 percent of all new students on the Twin Cities campus.

Even in typical years when that percentage sits in the mid- to upper 30s, the U’s rate dwarfs those of schools such as the University of Wisconsin-Madison or Michigan State University, both at about 17 percent.

McMaster is not sure why. Part of the reason might be the U’s location in a bustling metro area with many local feeder colleges, and part may be “a feeling of obligation” to offer access.

Now, the U is setting out to decrease its transfer enrollment by about 300 students in the next couple of years. The school wants to keep the rate stable, at about 33 percent.

Fluctuating transfer numbers can strain the university, said a U enrollment committee report that recommended a slight decrease this fall.

The U charges students the same for introductory-level courses and higher-level ones, which cost more because of their smaller student-teacher ratios. With at least some introductory coursework already out of the way, transfer students usually take more costly upper-division classes.

Also, the report says transfers show “spottier preparation, especially in science and math,” calling for more academic and advising help.

The U will set itself a goal of raising the three-year graduation rate for transfers by almost 10 percentage points, to 65 percent. (Transfer student graduation rates generally do not count toward national college rankings.)

In hopes that those students have a better shot at succeeding, the U will make it much harder for transfers with fewer than 14 credits to get in. The guideline is modeled on a long standing University of Wisconsin policy requiring at least 24 credits to transfer.

Said McMaster: “Students who come in with relatively few credits tend to have much worse retention and graduation rates.”

UNDER-REPRESENTED

The U’s plan doesn’t mesh with the state’s push to increase minority, low-income and first-generation student enrollment, said MnSCU’s Litecky. The planned transfer limits come at a time when the system is graduating more students – and more of those under-represented students – than ever.

“In a lot of ways, this decision couldn’t be timed any worse,” Litecky said. “It’s a time of record-high demand.”

As the nation’s economy continues to languish, more students go to community colleges with plans to transfer to the U; at $4,800 a year, MnSCU’s average tuition is less than half the U’s.

The U transfer admission is already competitive: Some 9,350 would-be transfer students from outside the U system applied last school year; about 2,050 enrolled this fall, 170 fewer than last fall. That compares with roughly 5,000 freshman overall from 40,000 applicants.

LeAnne Schmidt, a counselor at Inver Hills Community College, questions the U’s portrayal of transfer students as underprepared. They do often take longer to graduate, but that’s because they are more likely to juggle studies with jobs and families, she said.

Normandale Community College, where enrollment has jumped almost 20 percent in the past five years, is the U’s top feeder school, sending 338 students last year. Advising and counseling director Robert Lowe has been telling students the U is getting tougher to get into. He advises them to keep grades high and add volunteering and other experiences to their resumes.

Janet Marling of the National Institute for the Study of Transfer Students at the University of North Texas says community college students have become a force to be reckoned with as their ranks swell. She predicts more schools will take a closer look at their transfer policies, even if they might not take the same steps.

“Institutions will have to examine what their missions truly are with regard to transfers,” Marling said. “That’s very different from what we’ve done in the past, when our focus was almost exclusively on freshmen.”

Some public universities in California, where a budget crisis is driving down enrollments, have become more selective in accepting transfers.

Andre Phillips, of the UW-Madison admissions and recruitment office, said the school has no immediate plans to revise its transfer rate. But administrators are well aware of “a host of factors that push more talented students into the community college pipeline,” he said.

Those trends merit discussion, part of a larger conversation about boosting ethnic and socioeconomic diversity: “We’d be short-sighted if we didn’t think about these matters and ready ourselves,” Phillips said.

A BETTER EXPERIENCE

The U says the outcry over its plan has been disproportionate to the planned decrease of 300 transfers. Because the university plans to give even higher priority to MnSCU transfers in coming years, Minnesota admissions likely would go down by 100 overall; out-of-state admissions would drop by 200, accounting for the remainder of the drop.

Besides, the U wants to improve the experience of its transfers, who tend to report markedly lower satisfaction with campus life than freshmen do. More-stable student numbers will help, the U says.

The 3,260 transfers in 2009 were 700 more than the year before. Katie Granholm, of the U’s Orientation and First Year Programs office, said the school had to scramble. Students likely got less one-on-one time with their advisers that year.

“That summer was a little hairy,” she said.

Meanwhile, the U wants to invest more in improving transfers’ social experience. Last fall, it started hosting Transfer Welcome Day, timed to coincide with the student organization fair. The transfer plan calls for a new transfer student coordinator and a one-stop-shop transfer-assistance center.

Luke Skogen, who came to the Twin Cities campus from the University of Minnesota-Duluth in 2009, said such efforts work. He got all the help he needed signing up for the right classes, studied in England last spring and is on track to graduate in 4-1/2 years with finance and accounting majors.

“I didn’t have any problems with the process,” he said.

Music major Rebecca Bies’ transition from Carthage College in Wisconsin has been rougher. She said she bounced among three or four administrators, trying in vain to find out why most of her credits did not transfer. And as an off-campus-based transfer with a part-time job, she said making friends and getting involved on campus has been a tall order.

She can get behind the U’s plan, she said – as long as it improves transfers’ experiences and doesn’t turn into a slippery slope: “The U needs to consider that having a student population – including transfers – is important.”

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